DDoSer behind recent market downtime on Tor reaches out to market admins

According to multiple sources, the notorious DDoSer behind recent DDoS attacks launched on onion services reached out to a select number of market admins in the last 48 hours. The individual claims that all ddos attacks will be ceased for the next few days, and offered a ransom in exchange for continuous uptime.

Your correspondent has reached out to several market admins for comment, who all refused to go on the record for this matter. The offer is obvious a prisoner's dilemma since if any of the concerned admins decided to roll over, the DDoSer will gain access to funding to continue the DDoS on all other markets. It is suspected that the individual has run out of funding, due to the fact that no market admin has agreed to pay ransom for almost a year up to this point.

In addition, the Tor project team has increased focus and dedicated manpower to resolve the issue regarding intro cell attacks and other attack vectors which allows the DDoS attacks to happen. The walls are closing in, and what the admins do remains to be seen.